Gardening is an enjoyable past time for many, and has several benefits. Gardening may improve health, as the garden yields vegetables and tends to increase consumption of a healthy, varied diet. Gardening is also good for the planet, as it increases activities such as composting, mulching, and consumption of greenhouse gases as the plants grow. Gardening can also be a pastime that save the gardeners money, as vegetables can be expensive to purchase, particularly organic vegetables. Gardening can also increase a person's sense of well-being, as it connects them to a community of other gardeners.
Gardens can also be beneficial not just for the gardener, but also for the community and wildlife. For example, a well-planned garden can benefit wild honey bees, whose population is in decline. Excess vegetables from a garden can be donated to local food banks, which often don't receive fresh, healthy food donations but instead rely heavily on canned foods.
As urban land becomes more and more expensive, gardens can be difficult to plant, as most urban dwellers own little, if any, arable land for gardening land. Additionally, many urban planning boards (such as Homeowner's Associations, etc.) place restrictions on gardening and planting.
Furthermore, some people live in climates which render it difficult to garden many fruits and vegetables. For example, parts of the western United States are very arid and require large amounts of water to grow a garden. In some of these areas water is very expensive and is becoming more so as the population increases.
Thus, there is a need for a system and method that allows persons to garden a plot of land, despite the lack of available/nearby arable land. It may also be desirable for such a system to provide benefits to the community and wildlife, such as providing habitat for wild bees, and/or providing food donations to local food banks, etc.
It will be appreciated that the drawings are illustrative and not limiting of the scope of the invention which is defined by the appended claims. The various elements of the invention accomplish various aspects and objects of the invention. It is appreciated that not every element of the invention can be clearly displayed in a single drawing, and as such not every drawing shows each element of the invention.
It should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that any block diagrams herein represent conceptual views of illustrative systems embodying the principles of the present subject matter. Similarly, it will be appreciated that any flow charts, flow diagrams, state transition diagrams, pseudo code, and the like represent various processes which may be substantially represented in computer readable medium and so executed by a computer or processor, whether or not such computer or processor is explicitly shown.